This is the very first vinyl release by prolific German guitarist Steffen Basho-Junghans. It's quite long for a vinyl LP (nearly an hour) and also quite heavy (200 grams). It contains 6 pieces recorded live to DAT between 2000 and 2006.

Both pieces on side A and the first piece on side B all pass the ten minute mark, and side A opens with an 18 minute epic entitled "When The Plains Are Singing", a rambling slide-guitar desery blues odyssey. My favorite piece on the disc, however, is the second one, a hypnotic number called "Changes", which actually doesn't change that much during its ten minutes. The majority of the piece consists of quick, steady strumming on a single chord on a 12-string, but with very subtle changes. Not being a guitar player myself I can't accurately describe what he's doing, but it's truly stunning. Basically imagine any repetitive droney psych or Krautrock band jamming on a single chord to eternity, then imagine the same thing on a single 12-string acoustic guitar, and you have this work of beauty.

Side B opens with another excellent, hypnotic 10 minute 12-string piece, entitled "Azure No 8". This one is similarly minimalist, and has a staccato sound very reminiscent of some of Steve Reich's phasing works. Actually, in some bizarre way, it almost even sounds like an acoustic translation of some dubby minimal techno.

If the whole record were like these two pieces I'd have to give it a higher rating, but the rest are more bluesy and I'm not quite as into them. "Leaving Eden" is another 12-string piece, though, and has some lovely textures to it. I'm not crazy about everything Basho-Junghans does, but at his best, he's on fire. 7/10 -- Paul Simpson (24 June, 2010)